Oil and Gas Land Management Commission to consider bids to frack Salt Fork, wildlife areas

The Ohio Oil and Gas Land Management Commission has just announced its next meeting to consider industry bids to frack Salt Fork State Park, Valley Run Wildlife Area, and Zepernick Wildlife Area.

The meeting will be February 26, 2024, at 10:30 a.m. Please note the venue change for this commission meeting. It will be held at the Ohio Department of Public Safety, Charles D. Shipley Building, Atrium, 1970 W. Broad Street, Columbus, Ohio 43223.

You can find the agenda for the February 26 commission meeting here (pdf). Please be aware that no signs are permitted in the hearing room, and that an overflow room will be available if needed. You can also watch the hearing online through Microsoft Teams here.

---> If you would like to attend the Oil and Gas Land Management Commission, we ask you to register using the form to the right, so we can keep you updated of any last minute changes.

We do want Ohioans to attend this meeting, as this is when the commission is likely to award industry bids to frack our state parks and wildlife areas. The commission called this meeting despite our pending appeal of their November 15 decision to approve these lands for fracking, which the judge has not ruled on yet. Once again this commission is shutting the people's voices out of the process while they sell off our public lands -- but we can still attend and bear witness to this travesty of events.

But we also want you to be aware that the Department of Public Safety building where this meeting will take place houses numerous law enforcement agencies, including the Ohio State Highway Patrol, Ohio Homeland Security, the Emergency Management Agency, and Office of Criminal Justice Services.

Due to the location, we expect a heavy police presence at this meeting and cannot guarantee that you will not be arrested and charged if you disrupt the meeting. We cannot tell you what to do, but we want you to be aware that the situation for this commission meeting has changed.

Parking is available in a large lot outside the Department of Public Safety building. Please bring photo ID in case you are required to show it to get into the building.

Insure Our Future event at Nationwide still on

As it turns out, the Oil and Gas Land Management Commission meeting is on the same day as our previously planned event outside of Nationwide Insurance in downtown Columbus.

We are still planning to do both events, as the two venues are only about 10 minutes apart. We will move the Nationwide event to 12:30 p.m. to give people time to arrive after the commission meeting is over. We don't know exactly how long the commission meeting will last, but most past commission meetings have been over by noon.

The Nationwide event will take place on Monday, February 26, at 12:30 p.m. on the High Street public sidewalk outside of Nationwide Insurance Headquarters, One Nationwide Plaza, 1 W Nationwide Blvd, Columbus, OH 43215. You can find a map of nearby parking options here.

Please register separately for the Nationwide event here so we can keep you informed of any last minute changes or street closures: bit.ly/nationwide2-26.

The Nationwide event is part of the Insure Our Future Global Week of Action at insurance headquarters around the world. Nationwide, headquartered in Columbus, invests $4.5 billion in coal, oil, and gas -- even as it has canceled over 10,000 homeowner policies in coastal North Carolina due to hurricane risk.

It's wrong for insurance companies to invest the premiums we pay into the causes of the climate crisis, then leave us holding the bag when climate-fueled disasters strike. Nationwide needs to divest from fossil fuels driving the climate crisis, or we need to take our insurance dollars somewhere else.

Please register separately for the Nationwide event here so we can keep you informed of any last minute changes or street closures: bit.ly/nationwide2-26.

This event is co-sponsored by Third Act Ohio. Read more about the impending insurance climate crisis here.